El Carner 2019 — Grenache Gris & Macabeu
£36.00
A Wine That
means ‘ram’ in the traditional Catalan language. It’s a wine for the adventurous - for the dreamers and the darers. With a wild soul of mountain herbs, orange rind and earth, one sip of this will transport you to a place in which wild rams roam and rare indigenous flowers bloom.
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- Delivery: Delivery and gift wrapping options available at checkout.
- Winemaker: Matassa
France
Roussillon
12.5%
Red
75cl
12-15°C
Biodynamic
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Grenache Gris
Macabeu
Where and How?
This is a blend of Grenache Gris and Macabeu from a 0.5-hectare parcel of vines planted on a soil of lime, clay, and slate, surrounded by garrigue (wild herbs such as thyme and lavender).
The whole bunches were macerated together in a 1000-litre amphora, where fermentation occurred naturally. It was aged for a further eight months in the same amphora, before being bottled unfined and unfiltered.
The Winemaker
… Boy meets girl in vineyard. Boy falls in love with girl as they catch one another’s gaze across the fermenting barrels. Sounds like a romance novel, right? Right. In reality, it wasn’t quite like that. Rather, the girl in question — Natalie, the daughter of Gérard Gauby whose domaine Tom was working at — impressed Tom by eating an eyeball right out of a sheep’s head (a South African tradition). Tom was smitten; it was the beginning of a beautiful Roussillon romance. Twenty years later, they have two children, a farm and a business together.
Tom reminisces on his early days making wine in South Africa, saying,
“I was able to get my first two vintages past the tasting regulation panels, so they could get sold. I guess nobody really took notice, they just thought it was some weird bulls*&t that would go away.”
Those couple of barrels of weird bulls*&t would actually end up kickstarting an entire movement—not just in South Africa, but across Europe—from Beziers to Vienna.
So, it wasn’t some weird bulls*&t, and it didn't go away. Rather it’s about a simple and pure concept: organic farming, and fermented grape juice—without the bulls*&t.